Re: is smoking weed bad?

Originally Posted by a c

Are you really doing medicine.

Chemicals aren't 'good' or 'bad', they are amoral. Is morphine, or ketamine, or ethanol bad? They're all medicines, but also potential drugs of abuse. Marijuana has legitimate prescription medical applications also, off the top of my head it's a bronchodilator, analgesic, antiemetic etc, it's approved for medical use in countries.

Does this mean that these chemicals, morphine, ketamine, ethanol, are only 'good' (to say health promoting), when they are prescribed by a doctor? Of course not, especially when you consider the multifaceted nature of health. People commonly and accurately self medicate. The WHO extends its definition of health to social and psychological functioning, for many people so called 'recreational' use of drugs is health promoting when you consider this aspect, if marijuana use facilitates improved social connections in your life, or simply makes you feel good psychologically, in that sense it can be considered health promoting (there are also studies linking marijuana compounds to combating lung cancer etc, there are health promoting effects from a purely biomedical standpoint).

Of course, while they're getting this improved social health from marijuana, maybe smoking has a negative impact on their respiratory system. Compare this to a chronic pain sufferer who is prescribed opiates. As a consequence of his long-term opiate use he suffers nausea, wasting, addiction. However the alternative is to become completely non-functional due to pain. The point I'm trying to make in this analogy is that you can't categorise a drug into black and white 'good' and 'bad' dichotomies, it's all grey, every drug has contraindications and adverse effects.

Also I'm fairly sure that medicinal marijuana is not taken in by smoking anyway, and since the topic refers to the health effects of "smoking" weed I think we can assume its referring to its casual usage anyway.

Re: is smoking weed bad?

Originally Posted by mirakon

Im referring to casual use rather than prescribed medicinal use. The fact is smoking marijuana is badfor your respiratory system and personally I think this takes precedence over the positive psychological effect of using.it socially, especially since its possible to attain social acceptance without taking drugs but its not possible to maintain good respiratory health from continued smoking of marijuana

It's not even just psychological though, there are health promoting biomedical applications for which people use it. It's frequently used 'recreationally' for the same reasons it is prescribed - analgesia, antiemetic, sedative appetite stimulant etc...

For some of those applications, marijuana reportedly has less side effects for some people, some of the time, than prescription medications people might otherwise use.

It's no different to a legit chronic pain sufferer using opiates obtained illicitly.

Originally Posted by mirakon

its not possible to maintain good respiratory health from continued smoking of marijuana

Smoking up to a joint per day doesn't seem to decrease lung function, according to a study published in Jan. 11 edition of Journal of the American Medical Association.In fact, occasional marijuana use was associated with slightincreases in lung airflow rates and increases in lung volume, the study found.
Far from a license to light up, the study eases the worry among some health professionals that daily use of marijuana for medical reasons could have negative, long-term implications on pulmonary health.
The study, led by Mark Pletcher of the University of California, San Francisco, compared the effects of both cigarette and marijuana smoking over a period of 20 years in a group of more than 5,000 adults, part of a longitudinal study called Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA).

The data revealed nothing new about tobacco: As exposure to tobacco goes up, lung capacity in terms of the amount of air a smoker can exhale goes down. It's a linear relationship.
Not so with marijuana. More pot smoking was associated with increases in lung capacity up to a level equivalent to about one joint per day for seven years or one joint per week for up to 49 years. Only at levels of marijuana smoking higher than this did the researchers see a leveling off and then potential reversal of this relationship to improved lung capacity.

Re: is smoking weed bad?

Originally Posted by mirakon

Im referring to casual use rather than prescribed medicinal use. The fact is smoking marijuana is badfor your respiratory system and personally I think this takes precedence over the positive psychological effect of using.it socially, especially since its possible to attain social acceptance without taking drugs but its not possible to maintain good respiratory health from continued smoking of marijuana

so you're saying that only things that maintain good health should be legal and anything that threatens that should be illegal

like Graney said, basically all medicines should be illegal then due to side effects or potential for overdose

Re: is smoking weed bad?

so you're saying that only things that maintain good health should be legal and anything that threatens that should be illegal

like Graney said, basically all medicines should be illegal then due to side effects or potential for overdose

I never said it should be illegal at all, hell I actually think marijuana should be legalised because otherwise you got the stupid inconsistency that a worse drug (tobacco) is legalised and marijuana is illegal when it probably has milder effects on health. All I'm saying is that there are countless studies that show recreational, non-medicinal use of marijuana has detrimental effects on your health and hence why I say smoking weed is bad.

Furthermore, marijuana is often associated with short term memory loss and neuroscientists are closing in on a mechanistic reason why. Google it

"We conducted a population-based case-control study of the association between marijuana use and the risk of lung and upper aerodigestive tract cancers in Los Angeles... results suggest that the association of these cancers with marijuana, even long-term or heavy use, is not strong and may be below practically detectable limits."

"We conducted a population-based case-control study of the association between marijuana use and the risk of lung and upper aerodigestive tract cancers in Los Angeles... results suggest that the association of these cancers with marijuana, even long-term or heavy use, is not strong and may be below practically detectable limits."

from what i heard (i don't pretend to be an expert in this btw) but the respiratory problems resulting from smoking marijuana, if there are any, are more attributable to the process of "smoking" rather than the marijuana itself. That is, if you take in marijuana from a method other than smoking it is unlikely you will get respiratory problems.

And similarly, recreational, non-medicinal use of these medications/drugs/chemicals is also detrimental to your health, unnecessary and therefore "bad".

As for oxygen, yeah its bad for your health in excess or if you don't have enough. Similarly water. However unlike the recreational use of marijuana, they are vital for our survival, so the comparison is flawed.

Re: is smoking weed bad?

There's nothing wrong with it. Like anything it can have negative effects, which have already been mentioned.

Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it's inherently bad, and a lot of people seem to believe that. Yeah it can have dangerous effects, but what the hell, it's your choice. And if you want to do it, nothing should stop you. Just know the potential risks and side effects, and make an educated decision based on accurate information.